Team organization is a crucial aspect to any successful project. It ensures that teams are able to prioritize appropriate tasks, understand each other’s processes, and know when to lend a hand.
At WillowTree, teams are given the freedom to choose a task management tool that best fits the unique needs of their project. Even the way teams engage with the same tools can differ depending on how the team prefers to cross-collaborate. For example, a project heavily staffed with engineers may result in using a more technical tool, such as Jira, whereas a project with designers may result in a more visual tool, such as InVision or Figma.
One application we use at WillowTree is FigJam, a whiteboarding tool created by Figma. The beauty of this product is how flexible it is — Kanban boards can be used to organize tasks,to visualize process flows for a deeper progress dive, or for retrospective templating for team reflection.
I created a kanban board in FigJam that showcases all of my specific design tasks that not only helps me keep track of my to-do list, but also allows my team easy access to see what I am up to. One of the most useful cases for this document is it allows my team to refer to my board when going through the project timeline. Additionally, when showing this board during Stand Up, it helps the client visualize where we are in the design process.
Along with the kanban board, I also created a process pathway that shows my task flow in a deeper dive. For example, one task may be on the ‘exploration’ phase, while another may be on the ‘final client review’ phase. This gives my team a good idea of the progress of each design task and how long it will take to be ready for development.
The use of these boards help my team stay on track and allow complete visibility to my work and how it folds into the larger project. If you’d like to check out the FigJam board and try it with your team, feel free to download the template here.
